We watched the cycling (yes, Team GB!) again this morning and our (German) flag made its TV debut on the BBC this afternoon. This called for many excited Skype calls to Germany.
The distance between the female cyclists shocked me, as I had time to watch the leaders and the Peleton, go and get ready, and then there were still bikes going past when I left the flat for the station.
I arrived at Wembley to be given a Games Maker journal (see left along with a pin that Team GB gave me because they thought that I was doing a good job) (have no fear, though, the blog will still take priority!). Apparently, we now get incentives on certain days of our shifts, and we have a card to attach to the back of our ID to say when we've got them. Freebies!
Today two extra moppers had been recruited to our team because yesterday we'd had to run from match to match and didn't have a break in 5 hours, despite the heat. We did get more little breaks, but, somehow, however, I managed to get myself on to every single match that went to three ends, so I was on court for over an hour each time!
Because of the heat in the Arena (if you're going, I reiterate: it is boiling even if it's bad weather outside so don't wrap up at all unless you're on an extremely drastic mission to sweat off all of your body weight), there was obviously a lot of sweat action going on (we're talking splatter patterns of sweat which appear with each overhead shot) (glamorous, I know), so this equalled lots of mopping action, and I lost count of the number of times that we had to go on, especially in the men's matches.
I mopped for:
P. Abian (Spain) vs. P. Koukal (Czech Republic) (despite Raj's match going on simultaneously, this was a very good close fought match, and when Koukal lost he was a total sweetie and kissed the London 2012 logo on the floor)
K. R. Juhl & C Pedersen (Denmark) vs. LY. Poon & Ys. Tse (Hong Kong) (I here got my first mopping thank you, courtesy of Kamilla, who is one of my favourite players on the circuit at the moment, and who was absolutely lovely to me, despite leaving the line judge next to me minorly traumatised)
M. Boe & C. Mogensen (Denmark) vs. V. Ivanov & I. Sozonov (Russia) (this was far closer than everyone expected, and it was kind of weirdly reassuring to see how much the player's hands were shaking when they served!)
While I was mopping for my last match, Raj's match was on the court in front of me. And. it .was. so. loud! My friend sent me something the other day about someone trying to sue Justin Bieber for his concert wrecking their hearing, and I'm not exaggerating one bit when I say that I couldn't hear a single word that my umpire said, and I actually came away from it with earache. But the atmosphere was fantastic and it was so good to have a Team GB win after Chris and Immy's nightmare-ish past two days.
I'm working again today, but I'm going to be at a different house for the next three nights, so I'm not sure whether I'll have Internet to get a blog up. I'll write it anyway and then batch post it when I get back to Internet if I don't have it.
Olympic spot of the day: my favourite player, ever, ever, ever, Gail Emms, in the commentary box, air-punching and dancing throughout Raj's third end (as far as I'm concerned, I could spot Usain Bolt in London Waterloo and it would not top this).
The cycling race came past the flat twice today, so we sat outside on the window ledge to watch. It was the first time that I'd seen a cycling road race live (although I've had a pretty decent share of playing badminton in the space in the middle of the Manchester Veledrome track), and I couldn't believe how fast they went or how many of them there were!
The first time that they went past, it was hard to pick out individual countries (so hopefully they spotted our England/ Germany flags themselves), but by the second time, we'd watched a lot of the TV coverage, so had managed to work out just about who was in which group, and we managed to spot Mark Cavendish et al.
After the cycling I did a very rapid quick-change into uniform and sneakily budged a couple of the barriers on the road to manage to get to the train station... Where I then encountered the first of London Olympic Traffic with a 'sorry this train is full' announcement. Although I really didn't consider said train to be full enough when it stopped, so I got on it anyway.
I got to Wembley Park along with a lot of excited badminton-watching-people, and went inside the Arena to find many excited badminton-officiating-and-mopping-people. We ate tea together, and then lined up ready to go onto court (complete with our super-attractive too-big caps, although the lights were very bright, so we probably did need them).
I mopped for:
L. Tan (Belgium) vs. S. Jaquet (Switzerland)
XL. Wang & Y. Yu (China) vs. A. Bruce & M. Li (Canada) (queue cheers for 'Bruce Lee')
B. Leverdez (France) vs. E. Ekiring (Uganda)
M. Lahnsteiner (Austria) vs. R. Must (Estonia)
Y. Cai & HF Fu (China) vs. R. Smith & G. Wharfe (Australia)
There were 15 matches scheduled for the session, so we literally came off court, got water from our team leader and then were run to the final warm-up area to queue back up again to go into the tunnel and on court. (Obviously not before the seemingly compulsory team high-fives at the entrance to the tunnel...)
I have an ongoing joke with a couple of the line judges that I will either moonwalk back with the mop on one occasion or do the Usain Bolt arm-gesture (note to LOCOG: I will probably not do this, so you don't have to sack me yet), but on the match that that group of line judges were on with me for, I sat down to them tutting me for not doing it! At that point, the Jenny serious face (which is probably making its debut for the first time ever this week) totally failed and we all had to try very hard not to laugh...
Other than a couple of awkward coach standing where I need to mop type-situations, it was pretty much stress free and I loved every minute of it. The good old concentration-span is also being put through its paces, as I had to try very hard not to be too nosey into what the German-speaking coaches/ players were saying when they were on court (ironically, I think that I ended up on practically every single German-speaking match that went on)... There were a couple of people in the crowd who I knew as well and I did get a fair amount of 'I can see you on TV' texts, which I found highly amusing.
More than ready to do it all again tomorrow!
I arrived at Wembley to be given a Games Maker journal (see left along with a pin that Team GB gave me because they thought that I was doing a good job) (have no fear, though, the blog will still take priority!). Apparently, we now get incentives on certain days of our shifts, and we have a card to attach to the back of our ID to say when we've got them. Freebies!
